My three week tour of the West of the US is now over and I’m back on European time (well my watch is!). I’m still desparately typing and editing to try to catch up with our SID report. Quite a lot of it is live on the website, but getting the last pieces done has been tricky with everything else going on. At the end of last week, I was in Las Vegas for Infocomm. I enjoyed the show, but there was little that was really new although I did spot a couple of trends.
In particular, it was apparent to me that the move to COB for small pitch LEDs has stalled. The idea of COB is to take out a stage in making these (very expensive) big LED displays. At the moment, the bare LED chips are supplied to an LED packager who puts them in a housing with light extraction and connections. The display maker then solders the chips into modules, arranges them in a cabinet and adds PSUs and control. The idea of COB is to cut out several of the middle steps to reduce cost and allow the modules to be made more robust. However, as we heard at ProLight, from Absen, there are real pros and cons to adopting COB. If you are interested in this topic it’s worth a look. (Absen Develops CoB LED Technology)
Anyway, last year, we heard from several companies that they were developing COB technology and we saw some samples, but we generally weren’t allowed to show or report on them. By ISE, in February, there was lots of buzz about COB, but by Infocomm, the shine has really gone off the topic. Not only are there disadvantages that we previously reported, it seems that supply is also an issue. There are very limited supply chains and long lead times and it seems that the suppliers are looking for payment up front for the limited supply of LEDs. That means that a lot of working capital is absorbed for potentially long periods, reducing the commercial attractiveness.
Because of that change, almost nobody was talking about COB and there has been a shift to a technology variation that we saw at ProLight and Sound, which is adding a resin encapsulation layer around and between the LEDs which gives one of the key advantages of COB, that is to say, improved robustness. Traditional SMD LED systems are famously delicate. By ensuring that the refractive index of the resin used is close to the LED, you can also get better optical performance. This type of solution was basically at almost all of the brands that we spoke to.
So, once again, we have seen the competition from a new technology causing the incumbent to improve and make it harder for the competitor. We saw another case in quantum dots, which threatened the use of white YAG LEDs. However, the suppliers of those LEDs came up with RG white LEDs which got much closer to the performance of QDs, but with a very limited increase in cost. Once again, the competition in the supply chain works out well for the buyer!
Apologies again for the delay in the SID report. It will be out soon and it’s a really good one, I think!
Bob
